The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America [Hardcover]

Stephen Cox (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0765802414 | ISBN-13: 978-0765802415 | Publication Date: July 14, 2004

Novelist, columnist, cultural critic, political theorist-- Isabel Paterson was one of the most extraordinary personalities of the 1930s, renowned for her incisive wit and her unique interpretation of the American experience. The Woman and the Dynamo is the first biography of a woman who has long been a source of rumor and legend. From interviews, private papers, and her millions of published words, Stephen Cox weaves a narrative that brings Paterson vividly to life.

A radical individualist in both theory and practice, Paterson spent her early life on the Western frontier, "lavished" two years on formal education, set a record for high-altitude flight, became a journalist by "accident," and made herself a fearless chronicler and conscience of New York literary life. At the same time, she made a permanent contribution to American political thought.

Paterson identified the fundamental issues at stake in the crises of the twentieth century and responded with an original theory of history and political economy. In her view, the individual mind is the dynamo of history, working through the "long circuit" of institutions that maintain and enhance individual liberty; and America is the place where the advanced forms of those institutions were invented and are currently undergoing their severest trial. While other intellectuals derided the American ideal of progress and called for the restraint or abolition of the capitalist system, Paterson demanded a scrupulous application of the "engineering principles" on which American civiliation had been built.

The Woman and the Dynamo provides one of the few broad and detailed accounts of the origins of the American political Right, emphasiing the special role that women and imaginative writers played in its creation, and posing new questions about what it means to be "left" or "right," "liberal" or "conservative" in America. This will be compelling reading for those interested in twentieth century intellectual history, literature, and politics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Woman and the Dynamo is a valuable addition to the history of the libertarian movement... it should serve as a springboard for futher research into a woman and her writings, which are still highly relevant after half a century."

– The Learning Curve

"In this immensely readable biography, based on exhaustive research, Stephen Cox gives his readers the opportunity to discover or rediscover Isabel Paterson as one of the great champions of freedom in the twentieth century. Cox deftly fills in the economic and political background to Paterson's life story, and also provides useful summaries, analyses, and critiques of all her major works, fictional and non-fictional. Cox tells Paterson's story with the skill of a novelist, bringing her to life in all her brilliant wit and intelligence, This volume is a model of intellectual biography--it allows us to see the human being behind the thought, without at all letting concern for the personal details of Paterson's life interfere with our understanding of her thought."

– Paul A. Cantor, Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English, University of Virginia

"Isabel Patterson, the brilliant and unjustly neglected pioneer of libertarian thought, has found her ideal biographer in Stephen Cox, With an acumen and erudition worthy of his subject, Cox provides a fascinating portrait of Paterson's career as a journalist, novelist and political theorist and the result is a compelling work of intellectual history that should be essential reading for all students of American culture."

– Ross Posnock, Professor of English, New York University

"In his seminal biography of Isabel Paterson--the benchmark against which any further investigation of her life and work must be measured--Professor Stephen Cox has respectfully, yet critically, resurrected one of the most original and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Drawing on access to private papers never before made available, the author has traced Paterson's personal and literary life from her humble rural childhood to the pinnacle of New York's literary world. Professor Cox has brought that journey to life not only by providing countless colorful, even eccentric, details, but also by projecting Paterson against the wider culture and politics of her time. Regrettably, there have been few serious biographies of the handful of women who, in the last century, espoused and lived an individualistic/libertarian philosophy--let alone those whose lives and work profoundly affected today's America, and even the world beyond these shores."

–  Henry Mark Holer, professor emeritus, Brooklyn Law School

"I picked up The Woman and the Dynamo without knowing what to expect--and couldn't put it down. It is more than a beautifully written, utterly absorbing biography of a great libertarian thinker who deserves wider recognition than she has hitherto received. It also offers insightful portraits of some of the key figures in the march of libertarianism and free enterprise conservatism through the 20th century."

– Nathaniel Branden, author of "My Years with Ayn Rand"

"Cox has done a smart, thorough job of explaining and contextualiing this unusual figure."

– Brian Doherty, Reason

"The Woman and the Dynamo is a fine and conscientious biography of a strange and remarkable woman."

– William F. Buckley, Jr., National Review

About the Author

Stephen Cox is professor of literature and director of the humanities program at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Stranger Within Thee, Love and Logic: The Evolution of Blake's Thought, and The Titanic Story. His articles, essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in many journals. He prepared the Transaction edition of Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 418 pages
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers (July 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765802414
• ISBN-13: 978-0765802415
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,170,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An original and brilliant libertarian woman, October 24, 2004

By 

Richard O. Hammer (Hillsborough, North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed reading this biography of Isabel Paterson, mostly I suppose because she is a fellow traveler to me. An American living from 1886–1960, Paterson was a libertarian intellectual who lived mostly alone in a world which did not understand. She is best known today for her book about the source of America's greatness, The God of the Machine, but she was also a famous literary critic and a novelist. What makes Paterson special to me, her political values, will probably cause most people to dismiss her.

Stephen Cox gives a good deal of information about the life, relationships, and character of this woman. But, as a bonus, along the way the reader also gets short introductions to many other important people who Paterson knew. These include Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, John Chamberlain, Leonard Read, William F. Buckley, Herbert Hoover, and many more. The interactions with Rand are especially interesting because Rand achieved surpassing fame as a novelist and movement leader. Rand admired and learned from Paterson, who was 19 years older. On many occasions they sat up and talked most of the night.

The reader of this biography gets a good review of each of Paterson's novels, a few of which show characters much like Paterson herself. From having read a few of her novels, I would have guessed the author was considerate, polite, and feminine — a welcome contrast to Ayn Rand. But the reader of this biography learns that Paterson was routinely rude and ill mannered, and like Rand she broke off many relationships in cold ideological rejection.

Probably this book should be called scholarly; it has lots of footnotes. It seems carefully edited and produced. I noticed only one typo.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Isabel Paterson's America, October 30, 2004

By 

Steve Jackson "stevejackson100atyahoocom" (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America (Hardcover)

Those who known the name Isabel Paterson probably know her from her outstanding 1943 work THE GOD OF THE MACHINE. That work, as Prof. Stephen Cox noted in his 1993 introduction, is "one of the few original theories of history that have been developed in America."

Paterson was also a successful novelist and one of the most important columnists and book reviewers of her time. Her life also intersected with many of the most important thinkers in the libertarian and conservative individualist tradition, including Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk, Whittaker Chambers, William Buckley, and H. L. Mencken. Certainly Paterson deserves a full-scale biography and Prof. Cox has filled this gap with this admirable work.

Paterson is also well known for her influence on Ayn Rand. Prof. Cox sheds new light on their relationship. Paterson was a compulsive reader, particularly in history and politics. Rand, on the other hand, appears to have read little in this area. Rand would talk to Paterson for hours at a time, and many of Rand's ideas flowed from what she learned from her. They were both strong-willed and difficult people and their relationship began to show strains when Rand accused Paterson of using some of her own ideas without credit. (Rand had an exaggerated sense of her own originality.) In 1948, Paterson said something offensive to Rand and their relationship came to an end. To Rand's credit, she continued to recommend THE GOD OF THE MACHINE.

This book is something of a "life and times" biography of Paterson. There is much of interest concerning the politics of the time, the New York publishing scene, the nascent libertarian movement and the like. Unfortunately, only THE GOD OF THE MACHINE remains in print and it doesn't appear that an anthology of Paterson's non-fiction writing was ever produced. Hopefully Prof. Cox or someone else will remedy this situation.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "IMP" gets her due, July 28, 2007

By 

Anthony Calabrese (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America (Hardcover)

In 1943, belief in what we today would call libertarianism was at its ebb. Collectivism, in the form of bolshevism, fascism or even the non-totalitarian movements of socialism and New Deal liberalism, seemed to be the order of the day. Individualist anarchist Albert Jay Nock was in such despair, that year he published his autobiography under the title Memoirs of a Superfluous Man.

Yet also in 1943, a counterattack began in the guise of three books written by three different women. Two of those women, Ayn Rand and Rose Wilder Lane, are better remembered today, Rand as the founder of Objectivism and Lane as the editor (and possible author) of the Little House Series of books and of her own books of life on the frontier.

But in terms of formulating the freedom philosophy, the third woman, Isabel Paterson, less well today, was probably the most important. Paterson was born in humble circumstances in the middle of Lake Huron. A Canadian by birth, her somewhat shiftless father moved several times along the American and Canadian west.

Though she had little formal schooling, Paterson was a voracious reader and taught herself what she missed at school. Despite the lack of formal education, she ended up working in newspapers, initially along the west coast of the US and Canada (one of her bosses ended up as Prime Minster of Canada). By 1925, she was an editor for the influential "Books" supplement to the New York Herald Tribune, somewhat mischievously signing her "Bookworm" columns with the initials I.M.P. Along the way, she managed to write a few books of her own, briefly hold the altitude record for a woman in an airplane (though a passenger) and marry and quickly discard a husband (who she never seems to have divorced).

Professor Cox really has a feel for his subject. He does lose some objectivity as he is quite taken in by her. But he is willing to show her negative points. Paterson comes across as intelligent and gifted, a self taught intellectual, but as someone who was difficult to get along with. She had a tendency to break friendships over ideological grounds. Yet she also found friendship with her immigrant neighbors.

The book is well written and researched and while the last few chapters, detailing Paterson's retirement and decline in health drag a bi, it is understandable as her earlier life was so interesting. Paterson's importance in American political history cannot be understated. Paterson's 1943 book, "The God of the Machine" would help Rand formulate her philosophical system. Paterson also corresponded with Russell Kirk and worked for William F. Buckley. Those three, who would help shape the philosophical battles in post World War II America, each got something different from Paterson, and in turn, influenced American political discourse.

So why is Paterson not well known? Professor Cox provides the answer - Paterson was "a committee of one". Rand had Objectivism, Lane had the Freedom School, Hayek and von Mises their academic activities, Friedman his web of like minded academics and the ear of presidents. Paterson had her column and her novels. Cox notes that she resisted calls to teach at the Freedom School, and she had a tendency to drop her friendships (such as breaking off relations with Rand and Lane).

Cox's book rights a great wrong and hopefully puts Isabel Paterson back into prominence. Anyone interested in the roots of the modern conservative and libertarian movements should read it.